Chief Ramsay Talks Race Issues With Philly Tribune

The Philadelphia Tribune offers up an interview with Police Commissioner Charles Ramsay how his department handles racial issues. "Crime statistics point to a disturbing trend in Philadelphia: Black people are disproportionately perpetrators and victims of crime — especially violent crime. “There is an unfortunate truth that we have to deal with and that is that a disproportionate number of young, Black males are involved in criminal activity as offenders and are victimized on our streets,” he said. Those facts coupled with media scrutiny of several high profile incidents — chief among them the killing of five white police officers in a nine month period all killed by young Black men — have sparked speculation of discord. “It’s unfortunate that its turned out that way,” Ramsey said, adding that all five of the slain officers had also been Catholic. “But we’re not saying there is a war against Catholics,” he said. “We can draw whatever we want to draw from it. All of us have to get the conclusion that we’ve had some unfortunate circumstances and we had officers lose their lives. That’s not an excuse to stereotype everybody and say there is a war out there against white officers and Black citizens.”"